WHEN Mrs Margaret Thatcher came to Beijing 14 years ago to finalise negotiations on Hong Kong's return to China, she did not have a particularly happy time.
Her voice was husky from a cold, she lost her footing in Tiananmen Square and tumbled to her knees before the mausoleum of Chairman Mao Zedong. She was hectored about China's rights by Deng Xiaoping, China's leader, who was then at the height of his powers and in the words of one of her entourage, "short tempered, bossy, spitting and chain smoking".
The former British prime minister, now Baroness Thatcher, was back in Beijing yesterday in terms of bossiness she has outlasted the Chinese leader. With Deng Xiaoping languishing on his sick bed, she gave a sharp lecture to an international conference on how China should conduct itself, particularly when it takes over Hong Kong at the end of June next year.
Addressing the audience imperiously as "my friends" and quoting Winston Churchill twice, Baroness Thatcher castigated China for its human rights record, particularly the "recent harsh sentences" imposed on dissidents.
The Thatcher prescription for China was a system of law which was fair and equal for all, an equitable system for upholding commercial contracts, further reform of China's financial system and further expansion of the private sector. She advocated the privatisation of industry which she, had championed in the United Kingdom (not, mentioning that China, unlike Britain has no welfare system to cushion the effects of mass unemployment) and said business must have direct and instant access to information on the Internet and elsewhere.
All this was bound to lead to political change in China, she was sure, and indeed she already detected the stirrings of democracy in the form of village elections. The road to democracy would take about 20 years, she concluded.
Having failed in her unhappy encounter with Deng Xiaoping to secure Hong Kong as a British possession in perpetuity, Baroness Thatcher claimed yesterday that she only agreed to sign the joint declaration on Hong Kong in 1984 on the basis that Deng accepted that the its continued success could only be assured if Hong Kong's people were allowed to run their affairs in their own way.
Hong Kong people, of course, have never been able to run their own affairs in their own way under British rule, but Chinese government officials in the audience were not prepared to take issue with her on this point. The Iron Lady is popular in Beijing as the person who "gave back" Hong Kong, and her views coincide with that of China on the need for a prosperous Hong Kong,
"So I am optimistic about Hong Kong's future," she told the audience of several hundred in a Beijing hotel. "But China will need to show greater understanding for Hong Kong traditions, above all the traditions of free speech."
After she finished, a sycophantic American in the audience, praised Baroness Thatcher gushingly and asked if she would continue giving the world the benefit of her insights. "I shall continue to lecture and hope they will listen," she snorted.
A less impressed delegate, recalling the troubled post colonial experiences of the Indian subcontinent and other colonies, asked what "time bomb" Britain had left in Hong Kong. "It will not have been Britain that creates the time bomb, and you should note look for or find one," she snapped. "Now do I make myself clear?"